Photos: Video Screenshots
A dramatic brawl on the Montgomery, Alabama, riverfront pitted people standing up for a Black riverboat worker against a group of white people who began beating him for telling them to move their illegally parked pontoon.
The Saturday night fight, which was captured in multiple videos posted to social media, appeared to unfold largely along racial lines. And many social media users celebrated footage of the riverfront dust-up, which showed the white assailants get the tables turned on them by Black people who rushed to the riverboat worker’s aid.
“This is not … 1963 anymore,” read one comment, alluding to the year before the signing of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race.
Montgomery police confirmed they responded to reports of a disturbance on the 200 block of Coosa Street in the area of the Montgomery riverfront park. They said officers had “located a large group of subjects engaged in a physical altercation”.
“Several subjects have been detained, and any charges are pending,” a police statement added, without elaborating.
The brawl appeared to start when a pontoon boat prevented a larger river boat from docking. When a Black riverboat worker objected, he was attacked by a group of white men.
The conflict escalated when a group of about six Black men from the riverboat confronted the white party.
